12/09/2015

''' YOTAPHONE - !WOW! :

OVERCOMING RIVALS & JOKES '''

FEW PEOPLE rather, hardly any, looking to buy a trendy....... ..state-of-the-art smartphone anywhere in the world today would even think about:

A Russian model, but the makers of the YotaPhone aspire to give their very, very best, and change that.

The start-ups quest to break into the cutthroat global market for cellphones even got a boost from President Vladimir Putin, who has lately renewed a push to make innovation the next big thing for Russia's bedraggled economy.

During his ''pivot to China'' trip to sign a fistful of economic cooperation agreements, Mr. Putin presented two of the dual-screen phones to his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping.

''Is there cooperation on this phone, too?'' President Xi asked, eyeing the two-screens curiously, and Mr. Putin responded hastily, '' There will be.''

The very idea of an ''innovative Russian consumer gadget'' tends to provoke mostly gag lines, reminiscent of the Cold War.

Mr. Putin first began preaching innovation a decade ago, but the goal foundered amid the boom in commodity exports. Now many Russian political leaders wax nostalgic for the Soviet era, when the country produced all its own industrial goods, however dubious their quality.

Demitri A. Medvedev, the substitute president between Mr. Putin's two times in office, championed a grand, $4 billion project to cultivate a Russian Silicon Valley.

Starting in 2009, a graduate technological research university and state-backed innovation foundation were established under the tutelage of Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

RUSSIA'S TENSIONS with the West are a key factor in YotaPhone's innovation equation.

While recent tensions have prompted Russians to think harder about making their own products, they have also made the task more difficult by cutting off access to some technologies and investment capital.

Russian high-tech companies engaged in computer security and telecommunications also found themselves facing a problem they thought they had conquered:

The old spy vs. spy sterotypes that resurfaced with the Ukraine crisis.

''People are suspicious about the origins, so many Russian companies hide and pretend not to be Russians,'' said Mr. Galitsky. ''It is better to be an Estonian engineer, or Czech engineer, but definitely not a Russian engineer.''

Finding investors locally is not easy, either. Private venture capitalism is still largely deemed too risky, and failure is considered an unacceptable outcome for anything funded by the government.

Anatoly B. Chubais, the godfather of privatization in Russia [and still vilified for it], who now runs a government supported technology incubator called Rusnano, commissioned a study to determine whether the Russian mentality somehow thwarted innovation.

The study concluded that Russian are perceived capable, he said, but the topic remains hotly debated.

''In general Russians are very skeptical about themselves and their ability to create something good,'' said Mr. Martynov of YotaPhone.

Some are determined to try, particularly to end the failure to transform groundbreaking research into usable products.

The Russian Quantum Center, established in 2010 at Skolkovo, aimed to close the gap between science and business by recruiting leading physicists and their graduate students, about 100 overall, to conduct research that could be commercialized.

Four of the center's projects, all involving highly complex research in quantum physics, are in progress, financed largely by state money. They include creating unbreakable cryptography for banks and governments agencies-

Photonics to improve the sensors inside the products like the Apple Watch; and various uses for magnetic fields including cardiovascular imaging.

''The innovation ecosystem is being shaped, and I see positive dynamics, but, as of now we are still very far behind,'' said Rusian Yunusov, the head of the center.''

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